Risk profile modeling for large scale projects : case study of a transmission line project

• Main Author: Orozco Mojica, Diego
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2013
• Subjects: Canada; First Nations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/44280

Over the next several years in North America, the power grid needs to be revitalized and extended to deal with aging infrastructure, capacity constraints, and the pursuit of renewable energy sources. In Canada, and particularly the province of BC, very significant complexity and risk is involved in the approval, design and construction of such projects given highly variable terrain and weather conditions, the multiplicity of the environmental, First Nations, and third part stakeholder issues involved, and challenging regulatory and procurement processes. Described in this research is a holistic approach to the identification of risk as a function of project context, the representation of which is made difficult in the context of transmission line projects because of their large spatial scope and the vast volume of data of different types to be distilled and analyzed. Central to the approach is the representation of a project within an integrated environment in the form of multiple views of a project – product, process, participant, environment and risk. Treatment of the first four views aids the identification of risk drivers for a risk event. Knowledge of risk drivers assists with expressing likelihood of occurrence of a risk event and the magnitude of impacts should it occur, and selecting the most appropriate risk response. Application of the approach to a 255 km 500 KV design-build transmission line project is featured and challenges involved in developing its risk profile highlighted. How data visualization can assist development of a project’s risk profile and facilitating insights into it is also demonstrated. The use of the holistic approach described for the development of a project’s risk register and mining its contents using data visualization to generate useful insights has proven to be of significant value to project personnel.